This section describes approaches that could be employed, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or employed. Hence, unless explicitly specified otherwise, any approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application, and any approaches described in this section are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Wireless local area networks are being deployed in large-scale service areas using mesh network protocols (e.g., the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 6550) overlying wireless link layer protocols (e.g., IEEE 802.15.4e). Sensor mesh networks are being deployed using such mesh network protocols by sensor nodes to enable sensor data from remote sensor nodes to be transported within data packets to a destination controller, for example an executable application configured for monitoring the sensor data. Sensor mesh networks can be deployed for smart metering industrial sensor networks, building automation, etc. Each sensor node can include one or more sensors (e.g., video camera, weather sensor, smart utility meter, etc.) for collecting data; each sensor node also can be implemented as a sensor host node configured for joining a wireless mesh network configured for reaching the destination controller.
Sensor mesh networks can be deployed on a large scale that covers a large geographic area (e.g., a wireless mesh weather forecasting network), using centimeter-sized (or smaller) lower-power/battery-operated sensor host nodes, also referred to as “sensor dust”. Smaller sensor host nodes such as the “sensor dust” have limited battery life, however, and therefore are limited in their ability in relaying data packets from other sensor host nodes throughout the wireless mesh network. Hence, large scale and low power sensor mesh networks need to avoid traffic congestion since the cost to retransmit a data packet can be very high with a very low chance of success in successfully retransmitting the data packet.